Bagpipes, a song written as the soundtrack to a Michel Gondry music video, Patti Page's musical shadow, and Jack and Meg co-narrating a scavenger's rummages: It must be time for Icky Thump, the many-flavored riposte to 2006's Get Behind Me Satan. The duo starts big with the title track--Jack's fast-tumbling, falsetto-tinged lyrics jagging on hyper keyboard-sounding segues and Meg's pounding drums. They rarely shy from an idea, invoking acoustic Bob Dylan to frame "300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues," but interjecting a series of distortion-laden guitar paroxysms for good measure. The end of Icky, on "Effect and Cause," is where Jack's trademark vocal warble and spare, quick acoustic strums meet Meg's single-minded beats. Everywhere on Icky giant riffs leap and shout, with Flamenco horns and those eerie bagpipes and rhythmic shifts and Jack's impatient vocal kinetics, marking new territories even as the White Stripes again populate them with vintage ideas. --Andrew Bartlett
Review by Heather Phares
A lot changed in the White Stripes' world between Get Behind Me Satan and Icky Thump: Meg White moved to L.A., while Jack White left Detroit for Nashville, married and had a daughter, and formed the Raconteurs, a side project that won so much praise that some fans worried that it meant the end of the Stripes. Those fears were as unfounded as the speculation that White's new hometown meant that the band was going to "go country" (after all, Jack and Meg are wearing the costumes of London's Pearly Kings and Queens, not Nudie suits, on Icky Thump's cover). Though it was recorded at Nashville's state-of-the-art Blackbird Studio and covers everything from bagpipes to metal, Icky Thump is unmistakably a White Stripes album. The eclectic feel of Get Behind Me Satan remains, but is less obvious; interestingly, out of all the band's previous work, Icky Thump's brash and confessional songs most closely resemble De Stijl. "300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues"' acoustic blues and carefully crafted wordplay hark back to "Sister, Do You Know My Name." Meanwhile, "Rag & Bone" is a cute, ragamuffin cousin of "Let's Build a Home" that casts Jack and Meg as enterprising garbage-pickers; the sly grin in Jack's voice as he says "we'll give it a...home" is palpable. And, while Get Behind Me Satan was heavy on pianos, Icky Thump is just plain heavy, dominated by primal, stomping rock that feels like it's been caged for a very long time and is just now being released. Jack White's guitars are back in a big way; "Catch Hell Blues" is a particularly fine showcase for his playing. Once again, though, the Stripes defy expectations, and their "return to rock" isn't necessarily a return to the kind of rock they mastered on Elephant.
Aside from the searing "Bone Broke," which would fit on almost any White Stripes album (and in fact was partially written in 1998), on Icky Thump Jack and Meg push the boundaries of their louder side. Darker and slower than most Stripes singles, "Icky Thump" is their very own "Immigrant Song," with guitars that chug menacingly and lyrics that run the gamut from fever dream meditations on redhead senoritas to pointed political statements ("Why don't you kick yourself out/You're an immigrant too"). "Little Cream Soda" is also outstanding, pairing ranting, spoken-word verses with grinding surf-metal guitars that make it one of the Stripes' heaviest songs. However, the boldest excursion might be "Conquest," which turns Patti Page's '50s-era battle of the sexes into a garage rock bullfight, complete with dramatic mariachi brass, flamenco rhythms, backing vocals that would do Ennio Morricone proud, and dueling guitar and trumpet solos that capture the band's love of drama. As fantastic as Icky Thump's rockers are, its breathers are just as important. Though the Celtic detour that makes up Thump's heart feels out of place initially, "Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn" is indeed a sweet and genuine sounding homage to Scottish folk, bagpipes and all (and could also be a nod to the Rolling Stones' flirtation with British folk in the mid-'60s). And while its psychedelic counterpart "St. Andrews (This Battle Is in the Air)" doesn't work quite as well, it feels like the kind of quirky tangent that pops up on plenty of vintage albums as a palate cleanser. The Stripes' poppy and vulnerable sides get slightly short shrift on Icky Thump. "You Don't Know What Love Is" is so hooky it could just as easily be a Raconteurs song, though it boasts a guitar solo that stings like lemon juice in a paper cut. "I'm a Martyr for My Love for You" is the album's lone ballad, and while its melody is beautiful, it may be the album's weakest track. And though Icky Thump's track listing might be slightly front-loaded, the Stripes uphold their tradition of ending their albums on a playful note with the wonderful "Effect and Cause," which feels equally indebted to hillbilly wisdom and Mungo Jerry's sly jug-band shuffle. With its fuller sound and relaxed flights of fancy, Icky Thump is a mature, but far from stodgy, album -- and, as is usually the case, it's just great fun to hear the band play.
The White Stripes
Icky Thump
[Warner Bros.; 2007]
Rating: 8.0
For all intents and purposes, the White Stripes appeared to be defunct in 2006, put on hiatus while Jack White gallivanted the globe with Midwestern pals the Raconteurs. The previous year's Get Behind Me Satan, commercial success that it was, sounded in retrospect like a man frustrated with his duo's limited options, fiddling with more keyboards and pedals than previous Stripes LPs. Coupled with White's perceptible glee at the Raconteurs' expanded sonic palette and shared frontman duties-- not to mention the more diverse wardrobe options-- some thought it unlikely he'd don the red and white again any time soon.
Icky Thump, then, is a bit of a resurrection: Reuniting with Meg gives Jack the opportunity to slip back into sister-lover character, get his weird clothes out of attic, and return to basement blues. After the straightforward radio-rock trappings of the Raconteurs, Icky Thump packs an unexpected freshness, even given its back-to-basics premise; had it come immediately after Satan, it could have seemed like a cynical, regressive gift to the core fanbase, but following Broken Boy Soldiers, it recaptures a sense of goofy fun and a caustic edge that the duo haven't possessed since White Blood Cells launched them to the A-list.
Recorded over what qualifies as a marathon session for the Stripes (a whole three weeks), Icky Thump re-assembles most of the scrap-heap elements that characterized the White Stripes' pre-fame trilogy: grimy garage-blues, a left-field cover, bizarre spoken-word bits, and shameless Zeppelin and Dylan cues. The most obvious breaking development is White's instrument sound-- its tones are so aggressively tweaked that it's hard to tell whether he's playing a guitar that sounds like a keyboard or a keyboard being played like a guitar (prediction for the next White Stripes album gimmick: keytar).
The leadoff title track declares this territory nicely, alternating an overdriven, tortured organ with savage guitar jabs, and already proving a better integration of keys and frets than Satan's marimba experiments. "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" blends Wurlitzer verses with fuzz-guitar choruses almost seamlessly; "St. Andrew (The Battle Is in the Air)" finds White facing off against bagpipes (yes, bagpipes) with chainsaw seizures; and on "Conquest", he trades shrieking Casio tones with a trumpeter.
Yet, Icky Thump also treats us to a band that once again seems comfortable with its broken-in sounds, from the reverb-thud hammer of "Little Cream Soda" and the British Invasion 12-bar of "300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues" to the back-porch ditty of "Effect & Cause". Perennially dismissed, Meg White once again puts the lie to the theory that John Bonham like totally made Led Zeppelin bro, squeezing the most from her limited repertoire and unsteady tempo when locking in with Jack on classic Stripes-stomp breakdowns like the one in "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)", where raw talent takes a backseat to chemistry. The duo's effortless dynamic on "Bone Broke" dismisses the garage-rock trend starting to tiresomely re-bubble yet again amongst the indie dregs, showing that world tours haven't taken them too far away from sweaty suburban Detroit house-parties.
But unlike most other 10th-time-around blues-rock revivalists, the Stripes don't settle for endlessly rewriting "96 Tears", as the record's two weirdest (and maybe best) cuts prove. "Conquest", with its theatrical vocal and faux-mariachi fanfares, teases a promising revved-up early Scott Walker direction until you realize that it's a meticulous recreation of the Patti Page original. "Rag & Bone" with its spoken-word verses, is practically a thesis statement for a band that loves to write songs about itself, casting Jack and Meg as junk collectors with a way-creepy relationship, prone to amphetamine rambles and big, chunky rock choruses.
If there's a complaint to be registered about Icky Thump, it's that certain aspects of the Stripes' early character appear to have been annexed off: The sweet pop of "You're Pretty Good Lookin' (For a Girl)" would probably be Raconteurs property nowadays, and White's country dalliances (i.e. "Hotel Yorba") are totally absent. Revisiting old territory also carries with it the hazard of backward comparison, and the highest highs of Icky can't quite reach the altitude of the band's breakthrough singles, but some of that inadequacy is tempered by the group's more robust sound-- De Stijl now feels anorexic in a side-by-side taste-test. Whether it was remembering their own advice from "Little Room" or the freedom to write in another mode with the Raconteurs, White's strategy worked its rejuvenating magic, allowing the Stripes to roll back the stone on Icky Thump.
-Rob Mitchum, June 18, 2007
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